The Weight of the Evidence (18 page)

‘I suppose I can.’ Marlow, it seemed to Appleby, was looking at once enlightened and perturbed. ‘But I didn’t, as Collins seems to have supposed, realize that the car was carrying off the meteorite. I just didn’t notice it. In fact I didn’t know about the meteorite at all. I’d never heard of it – and I suppose I’d never walked that way since it was put there. All I noticed – and the point is, of course, that I happened to stroll up and join Collins just as the car was driving away – all I noticed was who the driver was. Collins asked me. “Do you know who that is?” he said, and pointed down the drive. And I told him. And after that, I think, we just talked of something else.’

Mr Collins nodded. ‘Precisely so, Marlow told me who this fellow was, and the information must have dissipated any misgivings I may have had. The meteorite held no interest for me, and I doubt if I thought of it again from that moment till the time that inquiries began to percolate through this afternoon. Little did I suspect that the fellow was carrying off something which would be used to murder this unfortunate Pluckrose.’

Appleby stirred in his chair. ‘And the fellow was–?’

Mr Collins smiled happily – very much the verbal artist by whom a notable effect of climax has been achieved. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘none other than Pluckrose himself. That’s the odd thing.’

Pluckrose had stolen the meteorite. Pluckrose had bashed Sir David Evans’ bust. These were both eccentric proceedings, or perhaps – reflected Appleby – a better word would be bizarre. And all sorts of questions presented themselves. Had Marlow, despite his protestations, been aware of the meteorite and seen it go? Had the incident somehow come to the knowledge of Prisk, who had also been at Nesfield Court at the time? But Pluckrose himself remained the chief enigma. Was his conduct – or what had come to light of it – susceptible of any rational explanation? Or had the Vice-Chancellor been right? A thing to remember about professors. They go mad.

But now Marlow had risen to take his leave – Marlow who must be suspected of having attempted to murder or terrorize Prisk in a sort of passion of indignation over young Gerald. It was a motive; it was a real motive if one granted a certain instability in the perpetrator. A lack of balance. Well, the meteorite itself had finally shown that.

Appleby frowned into the flare and flicker of Mr Collins’ comfortable fire. When the mind began to offer such little jokes it was about time to shut up shop for the night. But the Duke had gone amiably out with Marlow – perhaps he was feeling contrite over the curious trap he had endeavoured to construct – and Mr Collins was preparing to offer further entertainment to his guests. In place of the exhausted punch he was setting out whisky and soda. And then he looked up wistfully. ‘I wonder’, he said, ‘if we might venture on something a little more interesting? I know that whisky is a good deal drunk nowadays, but I must confess that I continue to associate it with farmers’ dinners nevertheless. And since Mr Appleby has gained such information as we can give may we not allow ourselves a little licence?’ Mr Collins had now produced a set of large and beautiful rummers. ‘
Antehac nefas depromere Caecubum
’ – his chuckle was at once bibulous and agreeable – ‘but I think we might bring it out
now
.’ And he produced a bottle of old brandy.

In Nesfield the trams had long since ceased to rattle; in the cinemas the silver screens were as blank as the mind after an unremembered dream. The subterraneous apartment in which the learned had held their deplorably named symposium the night before was given over to rats and spiders and in his private hotel Professor Hissey, sandwiched between retired ladies and commercial gentlemen, burnt midnight oil over
Annotatiunculae Criticae
… Appleby cupped his rummer between his palms and glanced from the cautious Hobhouse to the still morose Prisk. In the course of the afternoon Pluckrose had been buried – and on his beautiful white head Sir David Evans had worn a beautiful black silk hat. And now here was this cultivated old parasite dispensing liqueur brandy amid Horatian chirpings while the Duke of Nesfield spent an uncommonly long time bidding farewell to Martin Marlow. The numberless goings-on, thought Appleby sleepily, of human life. The disreputable goings-on of Professor Prisk, the man with the two invisible bags…

Appleby sat up. Among academic folk that second bag must necessarily stay invisible. Very little in the way of disreputable goings-on is allowed. A good dollop of open scandal and out you go. But Pluckrose had been a busybody and malicious. Supposing he had found out something extremely uncomfortable about Prisk’s private life? There was more of the likely stir of human passion in this, Appleby saw, than in the hypothesis of literary forgery or the like that he had entertained earlier. Suppose Pluckrose, for instance, had got hold of the shady business of Gerald, or of something a little shadier. Might not Prisk have thought him better out of the way? Again it was a motive, although wholly a speculative one this time. Had Prisk, then, had the opportunity of murdering Pluckrose? For that matter had Marlow, or Church, or Hissey, or Sir David Evans, or Miss Godkin? Or – again for that matter – His Grace the Duke of Nesfield? All this must be obscure until tomorrow. Today had been given to the
Dramatis Personae
; tomorrow must be given to Time and Place. Where had they all been when it happened? Where, for instance, had the somnolent Lasscock been – Lasscock who liked equally the seclusion of the Wool Court and of Miss Dearlove’s orchard? Appleby became aware of Mr Collins looking at him anxiously.

Mr Collins looked anxiously at Appleby and then anxiously at the brandy bottle. ‘I hope’, he said, ‘that it isn’t beginning to lose its life? Of course, it’s a great mistake to suppose that even a great brandy will last forever. But what we have here–’

This would never do. Appleby hastened to offer expostulatory and appreciative noises. Whereupon Mr Collins, brightening, made as if to replenish the rummers. ‘My dear professor,’ he said to Prisk, ‘will you have’ – and for a fraction of a second his voice hesitated – ‘another cigar?’ He opened a silver box. ‘What a pity that you are not spending the night here! But there will be a clear moon for your drive back.’

Which was a tactful way, thought Appleby, of suggesting that Prisk’s share in the compotations had gone as far as was wise. And certainly if the man had to drive himself back to Nesfield he had drunk enough. Enough and to no useful purpose, Appleby added to himself. For silence had descended upon Prisk; he was giving nothing away – not even a modicum of miscellaneous philological information. Only Mr Collins continued to talk…to Table-Talk…a mouse squeaking in a cathedral…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Table-Talking
: there was a nice cartoon by Max Beerbohm called that…
Zuleika Dobson
…Tavender…the point about Sir David Evans’ bust…the proceedings of Mr Hammond of the British Museum, a person of scientific mind… All this was mere reverie – and yet surely in it were elements purposively striving towards fusion. Appleby tilted his rummer and the last drop of brandy evaporated under his nostrils; it was time for Hobhouse and himself to go. But here was the Duke back again and it was Prisk who was going while Mr Collins continued remorselessly to discourse – on port, on Japanese drama, on fox hunting, on conchology, on tobacco, on the painters of the Umbrian school. Appleby sat back again, resigned. But obscurely he knew that through the long corridors and lofty saloons of Nesfield Court, that across its broad terraces and down its long avenues, that from mile upon mile of the deserted, moonlit ribbon of road linking it to the city something urgently beckoned.
Now
.

The Duke was in the room again. ‘I wish’, he said, ‘that I could find it in my heart to be anxious about our friend the professor. Even Marlow is anxious.’

‘Marlow is anxious?’ Appleby, as he echoed the words, got briskly to his feet. ‘Marlow took care to draw your attention to his belief that Prisk had drunk too much to be safe driving a car?’

‘He did – and it’s possibly true. I feel now that I ought to have done something about it.’ And the Duke of Nesfield shook his head – but not, it seemed to Appleby, with any very convincing appearance of dismay.

‘Marlow went off first?’

‘Yes – on a motor bicycle.’

‘And then there was quite a pause before you came back here and Prisk went off in his turn. Do you happen to know, sir, if his car was under anybody’s eye?’

‘Not, I should think, all the time. Of course a man brought it round for him and waited until he drove away. But Marlow had then been gone – or presumably gone – for some time. And that any one should have had an eye on Prisk’s car in the interval is unlikely on the whole.’ The Duke was about to pour himself out a rummer of Mr Collins’ brandy. But he broke off when he saw that Hobhouse had risen too. ‘You feel that you must be after them?’ he said. ‘Well, I understand your point of view.’

‘I’m blessed if I understand
his
point of view.’ Hobhouse spoke impatiently as the Chief Constable’s car swept round the first curve of the drive. ‘It seemed to me he quite liked that young man.’

‘Marlow? I think he does. But he doesn’t like Prisk. He wouldn’t be broken-hearted to see Prisk liquidated – which is immoral, no doubt. And he doesn’t think the guilt of two murders greater than the guilt of one – a debatable point.’ Appleby was peering ahead in the bright moonlight. ‘And I think he puts the whole thing to himself this way. If Marlow killed Pluckrose in mistake for Prisk then Marlow is done for. Life holds nothing more for him – except perhaps the satisfaction of getting the right man before we catch and hang him. But, if this theory of Pluckrose’s death is all wrong, Marlow didn’t think to murder Prisk
then
and won’t start doing so
now
, however much he may dislike the man. In a way the Duke may be said to be out to clear Marlow. He presents Prisk at his most odious and then provides a nice empty corridor or a deserted drive. And if Marlow
doesn’t
take advantage–’

‘It’s perfectly outrageous!’ Hobhouse’s indignation drove him to brusque interruption. ‘It’s – it’s positively feudal!’

‘Feudal?’

‘He thinks his own law better than the king’s. He exposes this Prisk to a fearful risk for no better reason than that he’s a – a person of immoral habits.’

Appleby chuckled – but his eye never left the road in front of them. ‘I admit there is something of the arbitrary baronial court about it. And would he expose Prisk to such a risk if the Gerald in the affair had been his agent’s son, or the rector’s son, or the gardener’s son? Feed your egalitarian indignation on that, Hobhouse. But keep your eyes open meantime.’

They drove through the moon-blanched park. The ancient trees – single, in clumps, in groves – had gathered their shadows compactly round them; it was like moving amid a great archipelago in which the sea was motionless and silvered and silent. Once they drew up short as a small herd of fallow deer crossed the drive in single file, mysterious on some nocturnal quest; once, low to the right, they caught a glimpse of the great mansion, elaborate as a doll’s house in some millionaire nursery. And then the car came to a halt before the park gates. From the lodge a man and woman came out together to open them. And Hobhouse called out through a lowered window. The man came up to the car.

‘What has gone through lately – in the last hour, I mean?’

‘The gentleman on the motor bicycle, sir. And then a car.’

‘Much interval between them?’

‘No, sir. The car came up before we had the gates shut again.’

‘Did you notice anything particular about the way it was being driven?’

‘No, sir.’ The man’s tone was decisive, discreet.

Hobhouse sat back and the car gathered speed through the chase. ‘Marlow ought to have been further ahead than that,’ he said. ‘Suppose that after saying goodbye to the Duke he–’

‘Quite so.’ Appleby was tired and slightly impatient. ‘But there might be nothing in it at all. He might just have stopped for a bit to look at the park, at the deer, at the house. Tell the man to drive faster. He’s got a clear road.’

‘What about more deer?’

‘They can’t stray across here. Look at the ditches on each side of us; there’s a sunken fence.’

Hobhouse gave the order. ‘Not a very nice place for a spill. But we’ll be on the main road presently. There’s the Abbey…steady!’

The car had braked hard; it swerved and stopped. Just ahead of them to the left a dark mass filled the ditch and rose in silhouette above it like a crouching monster with pricked ears, ready to spring. A horse would have shied at the threat – and the Chief Constable’s chauffeur had reacted in something the same way. ‘Gawd!’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty one.’ It was a motorcar with its back wheels high in the air.

They climbed out and ran forward. The car was an open run-about with the hood down, and it had gone helter-skelter into the ditch. Down the centre of this ran a wire fence on slender ferro-concrete posts. One of these posts had gone right through the floor boards, so that the car was like a beetle turned upside down and wantonly impaled. And clear in the moonlight a few yards off, giving rather the effect of an amputated antenna or wing, lay the prone body of a man. Appleby scrambled down and turned the body over. ‘Prisk, all right,’ he said.

Prisk, supine, stared wide-eyed at the moon.

‘Dead,’ said Hobhouse.

Prisk’s lips moved. ‘Selenitic,’ he whispered. ‘Selenologist. Selenotropic. Selenograph.’

The Chief Constable’s chauffeur took off his cap. ‘Gawd,’ he said. ‘A furriner. And calling for his mother, if you ask me.’

Appleby, with a hand beneath Prisk’s shirt front, shook his head. ‘Just a little lunar philology. And he’s not much hurt.’

Hobhouse’s glance went wonderingly from Prisk to the wrecked car. ‘A close shave,’ he said.

‘Umph,’ said Appleby.

Professor Hissey picked up the coffee pot. ‘Appleby, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘will you have a little more tea?’